Any idea my my computer wont boot properly on a restart?

Sometimes my computer will hang and I have to reset the system. Other times, I do a simple Start->Shut down->Restart (doesn't always fail this way though). I get a "Disk read error has occurred" or a "NTOSKRNL.EXE is missing or corrupt." The solution is not to do the chkdisk or anything like that, but rather to pull "out" my HDDs (I unplug their power supply), restart the computer, when it doesn't find a bootable disk, I turn it off, plug the HDDs back in and restart again. THEN it boots just fine... What is the cause of this... My disks are a few years old, so maybe they need to be replaced? I have 1x80GB and 1x120GB drives. I initially had the drives on a M/S configuration, but I changed it to CS; either way it didn't seem to make a difference.

Thanks!

 

Try a new data cable. They're cheap and can cause that problem on intermittent bootability.

If no joy, then your system drive is likely going south.

 

Can it really be that simple? Ill have to swap them out, god knows i have 100s of those IDE ribbons. When you say system going south, are you referring to my HDDs or something else. I could see my HDDs starting to go since I think one of them is almost 4-5 yrs old. Maybe it's time to get a SATA and forget about those bulky ribbons .

Thanks!

 

Good luck.